John D Rockefeller

John Davison Rockefeller became a man famous by his role in society as an oil leader, he manipulated and took over the industry and the business. He became a business man at an early age because his father’s ways of teaching his children investments and how to save. His dad would sell him and his sibling’s different things, including charging them interest teaching them the business world. Because of this at age thirteen he was lending fifty dollars at compound interest. He liked everything about business, even the little things like getting to have a high desk. He owned his own commissions office at age 19, and he began working each evening. He practiced what he was taught through his daily life, “willful waste makes woeful wants” as his father would say.

One day, he was looking out his window upon the Cuyahoga River, in 1863; he was making good money selling supplies to the army, but the war wouldn’t last forever, therefore he invested in a small refinery. He reasoned correctly that after it, the moving frontier would leave Cleveland produce behind. His fortune seemed to have come by accident, as he looked out his window at the right time. The only oil business had been run by the whalers of New England. The price of oil hovered just above that of water. The oil industry needed organizing to curb the price. No one could so, except John, whom wasted nothing. By 1869 he had the largest running refinery in Cleveland.

He knew how to manipulate just about every person he came across; his drawbacks, even more vicious than his pricing; he would charge railways a percentage for taking his products. In 1882, he organized The Standard Oil Trust; he had 14,000 miles of pipeline and controlled 95% of the industry. The Standard Company was now the largest and richest in the entire world.

He kept his company and its earnings on the “down-low,” because he was a target for ferocious press attacks. Cartoonists depicted him as an octopus